A Unique Distance From Isolation
by Busty Sinclaire
Summary: Rose and Jack and The Doctor and the thing that lies between them.


_A sort of continuation of Mad Girl's love song, though it can be read as a stand alone. Kind of. Still set before Bad Wolf, still 9__th__ doctor. _

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Talking in bed ought to be easiest,

Lying together there goes back so far,

An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.

Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest

Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

None of this cares for us.

Nothing shows why

At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind,

Or not untrue and not unkind.

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-Philip Larkin

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Fucking Jack is nothing like Rose expects it to be. She expects him to be warm, yes, but she expects it to be a distant sort of warmth. She expects the kind of warmth reserved for a friendly whore, or a particularly favorite gynecologist; warmth that goes only as far as the surface. Warmth that means _'I truly enjoy your company, but this relationship is strictly business. Nothing personal. You understand'_

And Rose would understand, because what she and Jack share is not a romance. Though they love each other they are not lovers. What she and Jack are is a convenience and nothing more.

Mickey had taken care of her, sort of. Mickey, sweet, dear Mickey had loved her and looked out for her and she had broken, or was breaking, or would eventually break his heart. Jimmy Stone hadn't loved her, not really. And he'd certainly never looked out for her. The Doctor is a strange amalgam of the two. Jack is another. The Doctor probably, maybe loves her but does not take care of her as a lover would. Jack, lovely Jack, who loves her and loves her not, would sometimes buy her a pretty flower on the street or leave thoughtful gifts in her room for her to find, and it scares her.

So when Jack says he wanted to cuddle with her after a bout of completely-platonic-as-can-be-while-still-fucking-each-other's-brains-out-nonlovemaking, it makes Rose very nervous.

Shrugging off Jack's arm, she sits up, and begins the search for her missing knickers. She grabs Jack's white undershirt and pulls it over her head. If she's going to do this, she's not going to do it naked.

"Jack, darling, we've established I'm a sure thing, yeah? You don't need to treat me like a girlfriend or anything. I'm fact, I rather you not."

She winces at the dismissive tone of her voice. It is not the most polite thing to say in the best of circumstances, but it seems downright wrong to say it while wearing his shirt and feeling his semen dry between her thighs in a sticky mess.

Jack sits up in the bed, looking confused and a little hurt. "Rose, what are you talking about?"

Rose squirms uncomfortably. She briefly considers leaving the knickers to fend for themselves and running off to her own room down the hall without them, but Jack is looking at her with stern eyes, and she knows he needs an explanation. She paces a bit before turning back to Jack and blurting out, "It's just that the only other person who ever took care of me like that was Mickey. Well, Jimmy did too, a little, before I let him in my pants. Once he got that he didn't bother. And he never bought me flowers either, just drinks at the pub. And ciggies. Wrote me a song once, though."

At Jack's look Rose shakes her head to clear her thoughts. "Anyway, I'm not used to not having a clear definition between girlfriend and shag-mate. I'd rather there not be any blending. No confusion that way, no mucking things up. I don't want to muck you up, Jack"

Rose jabs her toe into the carpet, arms crossed defensively at her chest. Jack sighs before rising from the bed. He makes his way, lean and naked and oh-so-solid across the bedroom to stand before her. He puts his hands on her shoulders.

"Rosie, trust me, I'm not falling for you. As great as you are, I am not a one-being kind of guy. I care about you and all, but…" He trails off and shrugs. "I like taking care of you, is all. I know every girl needs to feel special now and then, and you're certainly not going to get that from The Doctor. So this is just another way I look out for my friend, okay?"

"Do you promise?"

Jack cups her face and lifts her eyes to his. "Rose Tyler, I promise I am not in love with you. I also promise that, while I reserve the right to care for you very deeply, I will never love you in that way. And if I do somehow find myself falling for you varied and numerous charms, I promise that I will give you advanced notice. So, friends? With benefits?"

Rose nods, and throws her arms around him. "Friends with lots and lots of benefits."

"Good," he laughs, and Rose can feel him hardening against her belly. "Now get your sweet ass back into bed. I feel the need to prove my not-love to you something fierce."

Rose complies.

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* * *

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Three hours later, Rose leaves her room, pulling wet hair back into a ponytail as she goes. It still drips from the shower she takes after leaving Jack's room. The Doctor didn't like her smelling of Jack, and it is important to her to try to make The Doctor happy. Wandering into the console room, she sees familiar legs clad in black trousers sticking out from underneath the console.

"Hello Doctor."

"Go shower," He says with no preamble and Rose frowns.

"We ignoring the basic rules of etiquette, then? I said 'Hello, Doctor.'"

There is a muffled curse followed by heavy banging before the doctor replies, "Hello, Rose. Now go shower."

She frowns again. "Done it already, see? Wet hair and everything."

"You can wave you wet hair around all you want, Rose Tyler, but I can still smell him on you."

Rose frowns once more as he clambers out from under the console. "S'pose it's something you'll have to get used to, then. I can't get any cleaner."

"Been showering a lot lately," He says, eyeing her steadily as he wipes his hands on a nearby rag. His tone is at once accusatory and casual.

"S'pose I have. What of it?" Her voice is sharp, curt. It is a warning he does not heed.

"So is this how it's going to be? Jack cornering you whenever he feels the urge and your hair never having a chance to dry from all the showers you've been taking?"

"It might be, yeah. I'll stop and get the hair dryer from mum's next time we visit if it makes you feel any better."

"What would make me feel better is you not bring Jack's whore," The Doctor snarls.

The words are bullets fired at point-blank range, and Rose feels their impact. She surprises herself by raising her hand and striking his face.

"You have no right," she says to him, and her voice is cold and measured. "It was you who chose to ignore me. You didn't want me, Doctor. You didn't want me, and Jack did and you don't have any say in who I sleep with. So what I'm fucking Jack now? It's none of your business. And that's all it is, really, Doctor, is just fucking and you have no right at all to be jealous of that. You don't get to call me a whore, do you hear me?" She's almost shouting now and she's not crying and Rose is amazed at this in a detached sort of way. When she speaks again her voice is low, tired. "I'm done chasing you, Doctor. If you can't deal with that, then it's your problem, but I'm tired of trying to make you happy."

They stand this way, face to face for long moments, the silence between them impregnable. She turns on her heel and starts to walk away. He catches her arm.

"Rose," he says, and his voice is soft and raw. It's the softness that makes her pause, stops her from jerking away from his touch. He closes the gap between them and presses himself against her. Rose closes her eyes and breathes deeply when he places his lips on her neck. "I never said I didn't want you"

She holds herself very still as he kisses her neck, and does not move until she feels him slip his hand into hers and begins to pull her in the direction of his bedroom.

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* * *

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It is not until later that she realizes he never apologized for calling her a whore.

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* * *

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Making love to The Doctor is nothing like Rose expects it to be. And it is making love, Rose thinks, despite the coldness. It is making love because she gives his what she doesn't give Jack, would never think to give Jack. She gives him that indelible thing that marks her as belonging to him. And though there is passion, and a shocking amount of intimacy in what they do, it is still not at all what she expected. She expects fireworks and passion and maybe a choir of angels singing hallelujah when she climaxes. She expects blessed relief at finally, finally getting that man into bed. She does not expect the coldness or the stifling guilt that follow their couplings. She does not expect the silence.

The sex is good. Mindblowing, in fact. Much less alien than she would have thought but full of tiny differences in anatomy and action that made his otherness abundantly clear. It is the kind of sex you can have only with someone you trust absolutely: Pleasure to the point of pain, sometimes beyond it. The Doctor kisses her as if he is trying to punish her, and maybe he is. His lips are hard, his hands rough almost to the point of bruising. He grabs her hair and pulls firmly enough to make her whimper, leaving her neck exposed. When he bites her there, he leaves angry red marks.

Shareen had told Rose once that the medical term for rough sex is Unloving Intercourse. How Shareen had known, Rose never asked, but she never forgot the odd term. In fact she remembers it quite vividly as The Doctor slams into her again and again, the length of him stretching her, colliding with her cervix in a way that is just shy of painful but feels too good to ever complain about.

'This,' she thinks as her body quickens and her brain dissolves, 'this is not unloving. It's the opposite. Oh Shar, you were wrong. You were so wrong.'

The Doctor kisses her again, biting her lower lip in a way that makes her moan. His hands are like steel traps on her waist, and it never occurs to Rose to be afraid of him. Why should she be? It was The Doctor, her Doctor, and he would never hurt her. The Doctor slams into her again and Rose is lost.

He calls her name when he comes, babbling it softly into her ear, her hair, her neck. "Rose, Rose, oh Rose, Rose, Rose, I'm gonna-"

She watches his face, sees his release and the absolute bliss that follows it. Rose Tyler thinks to herself, 'I did that. I made him want me and I made him hard and I made him come and he enjoyed it.' She knows that if she tried, she could break him and she's never felt so powerful in her life. The he opens his eyes and she watches them go cold, and he pulls out of her and rolls away and Rose feels suddenly very alone. Here in this bed, with this man, Rose Tyler feels she is the only person in the universe.

She tries to think of something, anything to say, but she remains silent.

Eventually he falls asleep and Rose gathers her things as quickly as she can before sneaking out the door. She makes the Walk of Shame from The Doctor's door to her own and prays to god that Jack does not see her. She knows that she is too vulnerable, too exposed in a way that has nothing to do with creeping through the corridors in last night's outfit, buttons half done and key articles of clothing gone missing. Jack will see that vulnerability in her and she can't take that.

He sees anyway, the next day at breakfast but he never mentions it to her, and she smiles gratefully at him and wonders why she couldn't just love him instead.

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* * *

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There are many things she expected to feel once she got what she wanted, but the one thing she never expected was to feel like a whore.

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* * *

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They go on for months, Rose and The Doctor, sharing something at once deeply intimate and startlingly shallow. Rose tells herself this is what she wants and that she is happy with this. It's better to have even a tiny flake of The Doctor than nothing at all, she reasons. Mostly she convinces herself. On the nights she fails to do so, Jack will unerringly creep into her bedroom and allow her to cry herself to sleep on his shoulder.

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* * *

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It can't go in much longer. Rose knows this. If it does, she is sure she will break. Rose is reaching the point where all the good things, all the precious things are eclipsed by the pain of not having him in any way that matters.

The Doctor can make her come, but that doesn't mean he loves her. Rose knows this, and she misses the days before, the days in which they were just Rose and The Doctor, and the thing between them lay quiet and undisturbed. The moment is fast approaching when she will either confront him or remain silent and grow to hate him as a result. Rose wonders what she will do.

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* * *

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"I miss you," she says into the darkness one night, and her voice is small.

The Doctor's hand reaches for hers and finds it. He holds on tight.

"I miss you too," he says, and Rose finds that it is enough.

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* * *

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_I'm not sure what the phrase "Walk of shame" means in Britain. In America it refers to the morning after a one night stand, where you have to make the trek back to your car or apartment or wherever wearing last night's dress and smelling of sex and booze and cigarettes. And everyone who sees you knows exactly how you spent the evening because you've got bed hair and your make-up is all smudged and there's a hickie the size of Cleveland on your neck. Trust me when I say that it is the longest walk you will ever take. Don't ask me how I know._

_The whole "you don't get to call me a whore" thing was inspired by and partially lifted from an episode of Grey's Anatomy. I lost IQ points just by admitting that. Ellen Pompeo is really a terrible actress, but I loved the idea of that speech, even muddled as it was by her mediocrity. _

_The medical term for rough sex really is Unloving intercourse. I always found that fascinating for some reason. Don't ask me why. Again, don't ask me how I know. _

_Anyway, Be Kind. Review._


End file.
